I am trying to get Fedora going on my computer, but am having problems with the built in ethernet on my mother board. I don't know much about linux, but i am not a total newbie.

Specific problem, after i installed

NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0269.SLES8.athlon rpm

it showed up in my network devices as available to configure. However when I try to "activate" it returns the error "device does not seem to be present". Now I realize I am explaining all of this in GUI terms but I am not afraid of the terminal, however, my piddling efforts there met with little success. Any help would be apperciated. Thanks.